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Non Sequitur: On the Proper Spelling of 'Skeuomorphism'

By Ray Hu - February 5, 2013

in Object Culture

Ok so this is sort of just a pet peeve, but it's relevant enough in this day and age of push-button journalism and SEO to warrant a quick post here: As an editor and former philosophy student, I have an abiding interest in the English language and I generally can't help but notice typos that I invariably encounter in my daily media consumption. Case in point: the commonplace omission of the first "o" in "skeuomorph."

I'll refrain from pointing a finger at the perpetrator of the typographical error—I figure an eagle-eyed copyeditor will eventually spot the mistake and dutifully insert the absent vowels—and I take no issue with the content of the article itself, but this particular instance of the common misspelling happened to inspire a bout of etymological investigation on my part. I knew that the word was derived from the Greek word skeuos, which means 'vessel' or 'implement.' "Skeuomorph" and its related forms are the only instance of the word in English, but the root has biblical significance as well, and based on those definitions it also seems to mean 'instrument' to underscore a direct relationship between form and function.

Origins aside, I would venture to guess that the common misspelling is due to the word's pronunciation: it is typically vocalized as "skew-morphic"—an easy (albeit imprecise) shorthand for its actual definition, at least to the effect that one thing is bent or contorted to resemble another—and even the proper pronunciation, "skew-a-morph," is phonetically equivocal. The heterographic ambiguity is compounded by its highly unconventional spelling: the letter sequence "-euo-" is extremely rare in the English language. In fact, the only other words that I could find with this highly unusual three-vowel sequence were scientific names that started with the prefix eu- (i.e. good).

Corollary: "Skeumorphic" may also seem like the correct spelling precisely because the prefix eu- is understood to mean good, where the sibilant "sk-" somehow cancels—i.e. "x's out"—the meaning of a back-formed quasi-root "eumorph," which would mean 'good or proper form.'

The irony, then, is that the word itself is decidedly not skeuomorphic: its spelling doesn't look like any existing words, that which might inform one's best guess as to its spelling. It's another one of those weird cases of a term that must be committed to memory: a possible mnemonic might be to remember the root as skeuOS, as in a certain highly skeuomorphic Operating System.

Of course, this admittedly discursive linguistic analysis has little bearing the actual practice of design, skeuomorphic or otherwise: the UI/UX phenomenon is not so much a case of Justice Potter Stewart's oft-repeated notion that "I know it when I see it" but rather "I know it because I see it... all the f'in time."

As our own An Xiao Mina noted in our recent Year in Review series: "While skeuomorphism sometimes has its place, it's often mired in an unnecessary past, rather than open to a expansive future."

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Csaba

11 years ago

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Bob, I agree 100%. Furthermore, I love auto correct. Besides making my typing faster, it gives me something to blame when I make a mistake. Plus, it makes for some damn funny auto correct fail websites.
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bob

11 years ago

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I love that you're paid to write and not me-

also nothing irritates me more than people that troll forums for grammer- they emulate robots, I use language to commmunicate an idea. when someone picks apart how you expressed that idea I think they are better suited to police wikipedia articles than to engage humans in communication.

besides, as a human who uses a computer i am sure auto correct will evolve enough to make grammer and syntax nazis obsolete, and then they will have to troll actual content
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Csaba

11 years ago

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Hi Ray, ----------
Well replied. I had to make a few trips to the dictionary to confirm the nuances of your carefully chosen words, but I literally (that reference is for a friend of mine who hates the use of 'literally' in non-literal references) smiled each time because your tone was both sarcastic and self-deprecating. ---------- Thank you for clarifying the context of your blog with regards to your use of the word "vowel" in its plural versus its singular form. At the risk of degrading the discussion into a debate about whether you were referring to the plural or singular reference of the word "ass" (i.e. cheeks vs animal respectively) I will end my feeble riposte here. ---------- Thank you for printing my original comment as well as for the opportunity to learn that your hubris creates much less of a shadow than I originally thought. ---------- Yours truly, Csaba ---------- P.S.: My formatting options are even more restricted, leaving me to use the ad hoc quintuple em-dash as a substitute for the paragraph character. ---------- N.B.: At the risk of extending the olive branch, I have been unable to find a satisfactory explanation regarding the correct usage of P.S. versus N.B.
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Ray

11 years ago

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Hi Csaba,

At risk of feeding the trolls, I commend you for thoroughly deconstructing my (wrongfully) presumed authority with a consummate ad hominem / 'poisoning-the-well' argument.

But in the interest of clarification for more forgiving (or less incisive) readers, this post was not intended to skewer other writers but to explore the folk etymology of a term that describes a contemporary phenomenon in design. I was referring to the misspelling 'skeumorph' as a common error-- one that I've made myself-- not its usage in a specific writer/article, which simply happened to be the occasion for my musings (and for the record, it was misspelled in four places in that article, as seen in the blurred screengrab-- hence, "vowels").

Unfortunately, my hubris may have overshadowed my argument, and I make no excuses for the supercilious tone of the piece. I fully admit to hiding behind hedges (so to speak) as a rhetorical defense mechanism, but I'm not so conceited to deny that, one way or another, I've made an ass of myself.

Yours truly,
Ray

P.S.: It's not at all relevant in my case, since I *am* paid to write-- correctly, as it were-- but English isn't my first language either. Frankly, I think your comment is thoughtful and articulate (albeit a bit snarky, but I guess I was asking for it), and I respect the fact that your argument mirrors my 'pet peeve' stance in order to discredit and disarm me, and the preemptive postscript feels a little defensive.

N.B.: Movable Type doesn't allow for special characters or formatting in comments, hence the ad hoc em-dashes and emphasis styling.
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Csaba

11 years ago

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Ray,

while the proper use of grammar and punctuation is important when communicating, there are few things that irritate me more than pompous jerks who point out errors in an arrogant manner such as you've exhibited in your blog. Further demonstrating your *ssholishness (99.999% of the population will understand what I mean AND WON'T CARE that it's not a word), you try to mask your contempt for the majority of professional writers, whom you feel are clearly inferior, behind phrases such as, "So this is sort of just a pet peeve." ----------

It is obvious that this blog was not intended to focus on the use and historical origins of the word "skeuomorph." Instead, you devoted or referenced a single mispelling (ha! ha! take that copyeditor!) in 57.14% of your paragraphs. Since I know you'll go back and count them, that's the kind of person you are, I'll save you the trouble, that's four out of seven paragraphs. ----------

It's probably not ironic that there are few things in this world that make me happier than when bombastic simpletons (I have a thesaurus too, but I don't keep it glued to my hand) make simple mistakes that, had they been written by anyone else, would have been referred to as an assault worthy of solitary confinement. ----------

You wrote in your blog, "I figure an eagle-eyed copyeditor will eventually spot the mistake." However, since you've demonstrated the kind of petty individual that you are, I'm worried that your travesty will be corrected without mention and that you will point to my comment as erroneous. As such, I will try to demonstrate the opposite of your cocky tone (and mine as well) with a simple comment: I noticed in your blog that you wrote 'absent vowels' when referring to the spelling error. Did you mean to write 'absent vowel?' Other than that great article." ----------

Best regards, Csaba ----------

PS Critique my comment all you want for breaking any number of grammatical rules, however I think it's relevant to point out that English is my second language and I am not paid in any way to write (whether or not it's correctly :-).
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Ray

11 years ago

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Hi Simon,

Thanks for your comment. My understanding of the phrase "can't help but" is that it is a standard idiom, or that which intrinsically defies grammatical convention, and is widely accepted in common parlance.

But again, considering that I am an editor for a living, I couldn't help but look into the matter further, and multiple sources confirm my intuition: http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/cant-help-but-be-right/

Even one of your fellow contrarians tends to agree:
http://www.creators.com/lifestylefeatures/words-and-trivia/rob-kyff-word-guy/brother-can-you-spare-an-idiom.html
(and for what it's worth, we generally defer to NYTimes style guide, in which the "can't help but" construction is acceptable)

Thanks,
Ray
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Simon Fodden

11 years ago

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Since you mention language, may I point out that your "can't help but notice" is wrong. "Help" and "but" perform the same function and only one is needed. So the expression should be "can't but notice" (which no one says any more -- well, almost no one) or "can't help noticing."
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